Each Community Must Find Smart City Approach That Fits It Best

The term smart city can be useful for policymakers as they discuss using advanced communications and other tools to move cities forward, Bill Maguire, founder of Connected Communities, said during a Broadband Breakfast webinar Wednesday. Smart cities aren’t a destination, but a process, he said. Maguire believes individual cities must define smart city for themselves and act accordingly.

“The carrot is always sort of dangling in front of the donkey, moving you forward to a smarter and smarter city,” Maguire said. “I don’t know if we ever get there.”

For example, some launches fail, Maguire said. Some smart city technologies were deployed “with great fanfare.” Yet the city retrenches eventually “because there just wasn’t the community engagement necessary,” he said. Moreover, a solution for New Orleans might not fit Seattle, he said. The need for a community-specific approach “only adds to the complexity.” Maguire was formerly chief of staff for NTIA’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program.

Council Bluffs, Iowa, was well on the way to becoming a connected city in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, said John Stile, chief technology and facilities officer at the Council Bluffs Community School District. Public Wi-Fi covers as much as 90% of the district, he said. Students log into a school district system while others use a network the city manages, he said.

The network was possible because the city has a fiber connection to every traffic camera, Stile said. Between Jan. 1 and March 31, more than 6,000 students used the network, accounting for 8.2 TB of data. During the period, more than 48,000 people used 116 TB of data. About 80% of school traffic is “directly related to the classroom,” Stile said.

Stile doesn’t think of Council Bluffs as a smart city per se. “I just feel like we’re utilizing technology.” For him, a smart city “is continually growing, is continually changing." The city has staged events to raise community awareness of the network. For students who are seniors in the school system, “this has always been a way of life,” he said. There would be “such an outcry” if the network were to shutter. “There would be no way” the city could back away, he said.

On the other hand, “this is really hard work” and requires at least one city official to take on an extra role as network manager, Maguire said. He called for broader focus not just on areas that lack broadband but also on communities like Council Bluffs that are using available resources to launch networks.

Cybersecurity is a concern for community networks, Maguire said. “We need to engage early on … and identify whether we have the resources” or need to work with a third party, he said. Being a smart city can also be good for the economy, he argued. In Doral, Florida, a smart city, residents have launched businesses at a rate that compares favorably to large international cities like Los Angeles, London and Amsterdam, he said. If you visit the municipal website, being a smart city “is right up there” as “the very top thing they want you to know about Doral,” he said.